A ride home on Christmas eve

It was dark. We were hungry. Mom decided we would eat without my dad.

I was 6 years old that Christmas eve. The traditional Slovak dinner was prepared — mushroom soup and pierogi. My mom, my younger brother and I had been waiting for dad to get home so we could eat as a family.

The waiting part was no surprise.

My dad served as a paratrooper in the Korean war. He was wounded during a mission. The experience changed him. He brought home many demons from the battlefield.

The demons emerged during the holidays. My dad would get off work at a marketplace in downtown Cleveland and head across the street to a tavern with co-workers. The co-workers would have a holiday drink and go home; my dad would stay and drink, trying to drown those demons.

Meanwhile, we were home waiting. It was dark. We were hungry. We ate without him. After supper, my brother and I got into our new pajamas. We got new PJs for Christmas every year, the kind with footies and cool designs like race cars or superheroes.

Snug in our sleepwear, we sat on the couch and waited. Mom was anxious, afraid that something bad had happened.

A light in the darkness

Finally, two headlights illuminated the darkness. We looked out the front window. We could see a car, but it wasn’t my dad’s car. There were two silhouettes in the front seat — a driver and a slumped-over passenger.

The slumped-over passenger? My dad. Someone had given him a ride home.

The driver helped my dad walk up the driveway. When my mom opened the door, we saw both figures in the light. The man who drove my father home? A black man.

I mention his race because it’s relevant. We lived in an ethnic neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side. There were no black people in my neighborhood. Many people in my neighborhood wouldn’t welcome a black person to their door. This was the 1960s. The civil rights movement was in full swing. There was much racial tension in cities like Cleveland.

This man had great courage coming to my house, not knowing how he would be received.

After they got my dad inside, my mom invited the man to stay and eat – her way of saying thanks. He had done enough already and could have just left, but instead he graciously accepted. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with him. I’m guessing it’s the only time in his life that he had pierogi and mushroom soup.

After he ate, the man wished us Merry Christmas and went off into the night.

Embodying the light

Years later, I asked my mom about that night. The man told her that he knew my dad, saw him at the bar, realized he was in no condition to drive, and decided to get him home safely.

The man could have found any number of legitimate reasons to avoid getting involved. It was Christmas eve. He’d be putting someone drunk into his car, risking a mess. He didn’t know my family and whether we would welcome his gesture or even appreciate it. Besides, my dad would probably just get drunk again and be in the same predicament, so what’s the point?

Why bother with him?

Instead of walking away, the man thought about how my dad could get behind the wheel and kill himself, and maybe someone else, too. The man could do something about it, so he did.

He changed everything about my life – more than any of us can ever know.

Months later, my dad recognized that his drinking was a problem. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and courageously transformed his life, dealing with those demons in a healthier way. My family had many good times together over the years, times we might not have received if not for that courageous man on Christmas eve.

And who knows how many other families were affected that night? Many people were on the road. How many other lives and other families did the man save?

One choice changed everything

At Christmas, we hear readings about light shining in darkness and God with us in our messiest and darkest moments, never giving up on us. The Christmas message both comforts us and challenges us to be the light and embody that Love more fully into the world, just as the man did for our family on a very messy and dark Christmas eve so long ago.

I never saw the man again. I’m thankful for what he did and for what he taught me. He showed me how race and other differences need not divide us. Love knows no boundaries. And light is there for us in the darkness, trying to shine through us.

He could be alive today, totally unaware of how his kindness that long-ago night is still remembered and treasured. Every Christmas, I pray for him and for the courage to be a little more like him.

Maybe you could, too.

A lone flame in the darkness

A lone candle in a dark church provided one of my most powerful moments of faith.

I was raised in the Catholic tradition that celebrates the first Easter service at sunset Saturday night. By Jewish tradition, the new day begins in the dark of sundown and moves toward light.

We’d gather in the Gothic church and sit in darkness as the sunlight faded. The big, open space magnified the darkness, making it feel heavy and oppressive.

A priest would light the pascal candle – representing the light of Christ – by the back pews. With no ambient light, one small flame lit a very wide area and felt so powerful.

A lone flame overcame darkness.

Then, people in the pews lit their small candles from that flame, passing it wick-to-wick. Soon, the whole space was lit by a warm glow from hand-held candles.

It was a wonderful reminder that one flame shared by many candles can illuminate an entire place – an entire world.

Last Sunday, we lit our Easter candle during an online service as a reminder that we are people of resurrection. We walk in light that is never diminished. We walk in love that can never be taken from us. We walk in life that will never end.

We lit the candle not only for ourselves, but for everyone who needs some resurrection right now.

We lit it for those who suffer from violence, and those who work for peace.

For those who are hurting, and those who offer healing.

For those who are hungry, and those who provide daily bread.

For those who are poor, and those who are poor in spirit with them.

For those who are harmed by unjust systems, and those who work to redeem unjust systems.

For those in sorrow, and those who bring joy.

For those in fear, and those who bring comfort.

For those in dark places, and those who are bearers of light.

For those who are marginalized, and those who reach out to the margins.

We lit the candle on behalf of all who try their best every day to live in Jesus’ ever-present spirit. We lit the candle for everyone who yearns to enact God’s kingdom more fully in our world today – a place of love, compassion, healing, justice and resurrection for all.

May the light of Christ live within us and illuminate us. May it inspire and renew us. May it shine in our world through each of us.

(That’s the illustration on our Easter candle, which we’ll light each Sunday for everyone.)

The light in our longest night

The longest night of the year is upon us in the northern hemisphere, and I can’t wait. Not because I like darkness; rather, I’m encouraged by the turning point. We’ll start getting a little more light each day. Imperceptibly and inevitably, we’re headed in a brighter direction.

 

It’s a good reminder in this season. One of the most beautiful passages from Jewish and Christian scriptures reminds us that people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

And the light is never extinguished. It lives on through us, with us and in us.

It doesn’t feel that way in times like today. We feel a deep darkness in our world and in our society right now that we can almost taste, touch and smell. This darkness invades our souls like a damp, long, December night, bringing a chill all the way inside.

But it’s not forever. There always comes a turning point. It’s been that way throughout human history. Dark ages are followed by times of illumination and growth, both in our personal and our collective lives.

Always a turning point

I’ve experienced this darkness-to-light cycle many times. I grew up in the 1960s, a dark time when our society was divided over war, civil rights, women’s rights, religious posturing.

We had prophets, assassinations and convulsions. We wondered if everything was being reduced to rubble. Eventually, we emerged from the darkness and we grew, led by people who lighted the way. The moral arc of the universe bent a little more toward love and justice.

Now we’re back in a dark time. Massacres stain our streets, our schools, our malls, our parks, our nightclubs. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists march arm-in-arm with supporters who call them very fine people. Religious leaders urge congregants to remove their values and get in bed with politicians who do evil things to children and women.

The powerful and wealthy have descended like a plague of locusts, gorging themselves on everything. They leave little behind when they move off to some other area of our society, displaying no sense of responsibility or remorse for what they’ve done.

We feel the chill in our souls. We taste the darkness all around us.

It’s important to remember: It’s only temporary. The light is still there – dimmed but never extinguished, ready to warm and lead us all over again, if we let it.

Christians are preparing to celebrate a life that was a light in the great darkness. His compassion and healing warmed damp souls and helped people recognize how much they were embraced by a love that can change their lives and their world as well.

His message: Take this light and make it your own. You are the light of the world. You’re the candle, you’re the wick. Go and be the light. Don’t hide under a container, keeping the light to yourself.

Light the way through your daily kindness and love.

Be the light

Unlike our seasons, which are naturally regulated, our human cycles of light-and-darkness last as long as we allow. We decide whether to bring a little more light into each day by how we live, love and heal.

People of the light are those who bridge divisions, diffuse conflicts, shine a bright hope into the darkness that is never completely dispelled but can be overcome. They persist in pushing back against the forces of darkness.

In our own ways, each of us can be the bright star in the dark sky that provides others a way to navigate. We can be the rising sun that disperses the darkness for another day. We can be the fireplace that brightens the room and warms the souls of all who gather with us.

In this time of great darkness, we need to be the greater light.

Just blink

Fewer fireflies are taking flight these days. In early June, hundreds would rise slowly from the ground at dusk in my neighborhood and start blinking. Now, there’s not so many of them. Their days among us are starting to run out. It makes me sad.

Fireflies are one of my favorite things in life. Have been for as long as I can remember.

Everyone has their stories of chasing them, clasping them loosely in their hand, then depositing them in a jar to watch them do their magic up-close. I remember summers at a cottage near Youngstown, Ohio where the darkness was so deep and rich and the flash of those bugs so magnificent. They’d rise into the trees and turn them into a Christmas display with their nonstop blinking. We’d temporarily capture them, marvel at them, and then let them go.

Don’t believe in magic? Spend a little time watching fireflies do their thing.

What’s always amazed me was how they produce such beautiful light from their little bug bodies. When I got older and learned the science behind the blinking bugs, they became even more magical.

It was cool to learn about their incredibly complicated lighting-up process, called bioluminescence. How the bugs’ little bodies combine oxygen with calcium, adenosine triphosphate (yes, I’m cutting and pasting now!) and a chemical called luciferin to produce an enzyme that’s luminescent. And they do this without producing any heat whatsoever.

Don’t you wish you could do that?

So, that’s how they blink. But why do they blink? To communicate information, apparently, including their intentions to make baby fireflies. Their blinking patterns attract each other. So yes, the blinking you see is fireflies making sure we will have more fireflies next year. And the next year and the next. The blinking will never end.

Pretty miraculous stuff, all in all. I think fireflies are among the creator’s best work.

Last week, it was especially comforting and encouraging to watch the magical bugs take flight. All of the shootings and bombings and hatred in our world made it feel like a very dark place. And I was reminded that it’s only when the world starts to become really dark that the fireflies recognize that it’s time to come out of hiding and light it up.

A good lesson for you and me, no?

There are a lot of bugs that don’t light up. They do nothing to push back the darkness. And then there are others that transform it by doing what comes naturally to them.

Same with people, too.

We don’t need a search light to counterbalance darkness. No powerful flashlight, no enormous bonfire. Most of us have all that we need right inside of us. We have to recognize it and then have the courage to use it — to blink our blink – and put a little light into our darkening world.

And that, too, is pretty magical.

Just blink.